


See You Instead

by Allowisp



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Gen, Mentions of past canon sexual assault and abuse, Scars, Writing on Skin, queerplatonic, spoilers if you get no feels when you read "Foyet"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9262841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allowisp/pseuds/Allowisp
Summary: Rossi searches for a way to help his old friend with scars both mental and physical.





	

  **See You Instead**

 

David Rossi walked Aaron up to his apartment. For what felt like the first time, he watched his old friend dismantle and reassemble new security measures. The door with its deadbolt and locks formed a flimsy hermetic shield between them and the outside world. “We’ll get him,” he said.

Aaron glanced up, confused. “Dave, we already did.”

“You know what I mean.”

Aaron’s features smoothed out. He set his lips in a thin line. He walked to his liquor stand and poured a finger of whiskey, the same as he told David he did the night Foyet came for him. He lifted the glass like he was going to drink it, but he stopped, the glass an inch from his lips. Even if Aaron hadn’t told David that this was how it happened, David would have known instinctively in that moment. Aaron was standing in the exact same place, and Foyet was about to get him again.

“You want to offer me a drink?” said David. Because he was there this time. He could break the rhythm.

Aaron smiled at him over the rim of the glass. He handed it to David and poured himself another.

David waited until Aaron looked up at him again. They clinked their glasses together and drank.

“Jack’s staying at Jessica’s,” said Aaron. “I haven’t moved everything to the new house yet.”

“If it's the manual labor holding you back, we'll get the kids to do it. I hear Morgan loves that stuff. Did you know he flips houses in his spare time? Him and some contracting buddies.” David always had trouble physically moving the boxes after each of his failed marriages. It had nothing to do with the boxes' weight and everything to do with admitting the divorce was _happening_. Best hire somebody else to do it. He figured that out after the first couple times.

“That sounds nice,” Aaron admitted.

They traded stories over another drink. It was good to see Aaron relax. He wouldn't drink, wouldn't have taken off his weapon with David at the door if he didn't feel safe. If he wasn't... maintaining. David cleared his throat. “So, these locks,” he said. “They working for you?”

“Not really. I don't know.” Aaron followed David's gaze to where their service weapons hung. “Rationally, I know he's not coming back, but at the same time, he's always with me.”

“He's not with you. I'm with you. The team is with you.”

“Yes. You're with me.” Aaron smiled. “I was never surprised by the success of your books. You always know just what to say.”

“Observation and communication. Those are the two keys every agent and every writer needs.”

“You always know how to... make sense of things. I don't know how or why, but when I read what you write about what we do, it's easier to make peace with those cases.”

“You know,” said David, “a while back, I spoke to this other writer. He had just lost someone. For weeks, months afterward his friends would drive by and see him in his driveway. He was pouring concrete. They would look out the window at him, and they’d say, ‘My God. He’s handling this so well.’ They expected him to cry more, I guess, or need to talk. But the truth was, this guy, he just needed to be left alone to pour his concrete. He had to carry the loss his own way.”

Aaron tilted his head to one side. Even though he had to know what David was really talking about, a smile pulled at the corner of his lips.

David felt the same expression forming on his own face. Unconscious mirroring. Instant rapport. There was something inherently delightful about being around someone who knew him so well—someone who was also thinking about how well David knew him in order to say these things, and how perfectly they simultaneously read each other. _Did you feel that?_ David resisted the insane urge to say. _Are you thinking about how funny this thing we do is, too?_ “You know I trust your judgment, Aaron.”

“I know. You never question me.”

“So you ought to know I’m just _waiting_ for you to tell me what I can do for you.”

“I believe you.”

“If all you need is for me to leave you alone--”

“Don't.” Aaron hesitated.

“There is something, isn’t there?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t even figure out what I need. I’d ask you in an instant if I had any idea, Dave. But there might not even be a solution.”

David raised an eyebrow. “Try me.”

Aaron took David’s shot glass and set it by his own. He brushed his hand against David’s arm—his favorite gesture, but one that looked sometimes to David as if he wanted something more. This time Aaron let his hand just rest there. It was a long time before he said anything. That was all right.

Aaron had a reputation for being well-spoken, but on the rare occasions when he talked about himself, he had trouble finding the words. David, in his vanity, found it flattering that Aaron showed him that particular vulnerability. And he respected it, breathing evenly beside Aaron, giving him time.

Finally, Aaron squeezed his eyes shut and spoke. “Every time I look in the mirror, I see him.”

Oh.

“It’s the scars.” Aaron’s grip tightened on David’s arm. “I look at myself, and I see what he did. I look at my skin. I see him _in_ it.” He opened his eyes and searched David’s face. “Ha. He really had to prove he wasn’t impotent. I thought I had become somebody that would never happen to again.”

“I’m glad you beat him to death. The sick bastard deserved it.” It really was too bad some people couldn’t be killed twice, David thought, not for the first time in his profiling career but never before with such vehemence.

“I look at myself and I think about him. It's automatic. I can't stop.”

“Have you been seeing a professional? No, come on. Don't look at me like that. I know talk therapy hasn't been your, uh, your thing in the past, but it's always worth giving a shot, just once.”

“I always do, Dave. I know it's supposed to help. I don't know why it doesn't work for me.” Aaron gave him an empty look, and Dave felt bad for even bringing it up.

Aaron had poured himself out in therapy multiple times in the past at Dave's urging. He'd been fully open and receptive with professionals David used before and trusted, but the most Aaron ever got out of it was exponentially more frequent panic attacks between appointments. David found out about those when, heeding an intuition, he walked into Aaron's office and pulled him out from under his desk, where apparently he'd been for three hours. _I did_ this, he'd thought in anguish as Aaron clung to him, _I did this._ He begged Aaron to stop going through hell _because David had asked it_ there and then. “I’ve been turning it over in my head, but there’s not a thing I can do.”

“Is it easier when you cover up?”

“Yes. I can hardly take off my shirt.”

“You know, some folks get tattoos over scars they don't like. Have you thought about that?”

“I did. The Bureau has a policy. I could ignore it. But someone I don’t know with a needle, above me, doing that? I can’t.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Garcia was an amateur tattoo artist. We’ve got to know somebody.”

“No. It’s not like that. It’s not just about the marks themselves. The memory of getting them has to be as... It has to be enough to override Foyet. And it has to be someone…” Aaron shook his head. He dropped his hand from David’s arm. “I had this insane thought, actually, that you… Dave, I think of Foyet because of the scars. Signs of him are all over me. They’re even inside me. I want to cut them off, claw them out. But the new scars would be him, too. They'd only remind me of him. If I did something further to myself, I’d still look at it and think of him.”

It took a moment for David to realize what he meant. Then nausea hit him. “Aaron, you haven’t.”

“No. Like I said, it wouldn’t do any good. I’ve thought every avenue through. I can’t survive this on my own.”

David started breathing again. Stopped staring at Aaron's sternum as if he could see through cloth to whatever new wounds Aaron might have opened under it.

“It’s like I don’t own my body because he’s constantly using it to get into my head. I look in the mirror, and… I’ve lost the ability to see… I don’t think I can ever just see myself there ever again. Dave, I had this insane thought when I got out of the shower last night. I see him on my skin now because of what he did to me. I looked at it last night, and I imagined what it might be like if I could see someone else there. Someone I actually wanted around. I imagined the marks made me think of someone good, someone safe. I imagined I could see you instead.”

“Me,” repeated David. “Me, specifically? Why me?”

“I was thinking about how you stand by me, about how I can send you out during a case and feel as secure about how it'll get done as though I went myself.”

He paused for a moment, gathering his words again, and in the silence David couldn't help but quirk his eyebrows and murmur, “ 'This man, too, is Alexander.' ”

From the way the corners of Aaron's eyes crinkled for an instant in reply, David could tell the quotation pleased him. _You always know just what to say._ “Then I was trying not to look at my skin or the mirror, and the thoughts connected. And I was surprised by how much I wanted it.”

“So, let me get this straight. You want me to mark you up.” Why did this feel like a sex discussion, like one of his girlfriends dancing around what she wanted in bed?

“I haven't thought about it beyond how I want to feel. I know it's strange. I'm just so caught on imagining you overriding him. That bad thing in my life suddenly replaced by good.”

”Look, Aaron. You've been talking a lot. But you haven't asked for anything.”

“I don't know how. It wouldn't be right.”

“There is no such thing as right when it comes to how you feel.” Yes, exactly like a sex talk, David thought. Hell, if that was what worked. They knew each other well enough that no matter how it went they could look each other in the eye the next morning.

But if three failed marriages taught David anything, it was that sex didn't magically fix anything just because it was sex. The movies lied. If it was possible to feel an end-all be-all _everything_ , to reach a place where everything was _right,_ David was confident he'd proved sex wasn't sufficient.

Aaron sighed. “I mean that I can't ask you to do something that would make you uncomfortable. What, really, would you say, Dave, if I--” He stopped. He swallowed. His eyes went wide. “If I asked.” Each syllable that time was fast and awkward the way it only was when Aaron had the whole sentence assembled in his head, and it was exactly what he meant, and he wanted to make sure it traveled perfectly intact from his mind down to his tongue. “What if I asked you to engrave yourself in me deeper than Foyet ever dreamed of?”

No wonder Aaron had trouble saying that. David felt like a cello string; somebody just plucked him so hard he nearly snapped. “I don’t know anything about tattoo art.”

“It doesn’t have to be tattoos.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don't know, Dave.”

“No, you know. You've got something. Say it.”

“I shouldn't.” Aaron looked away. His voice dropped to a breath. “All you’d need is a blade.”

Nope. “You’re right. That is insane.”

“Dave—”

“You think I'd rip into you? You think there's anything that would me do that? Make me able to do that? I _can't_.”

Aaron squeezed his eyes shut. “I know,” he murmured. “Maybe that's the appeal. If you ever could, it'd be the greatest sacrifice you ever made for me.” Aaron turned toward him again. He took David's hands and, as David watched in perplexity, pressed them hard against his own chest, as though he could physically pull David into his heart, as though he thought doing that would rebuild him. “I don't care how you do it, Dave,” he whispered. “But I'm asking you to help me. All I know is what's wrong.”

David's gaze fell on Aaron's hands wrapped around his own.

He could back away right now and forget this conversation. But he knew what would happen to Aaron if he did. He knew what Aaron would eventually do to himself.

So he stayed, and he thought about it.

Actual mutilation might be Aaron's first desire, but for David that was completely out.

He wasn't a tattoo artist. Aaron couldn't wait around for him to become one. He couldn't draw, so impermanent art wouldn't work. He could cook. That was all. Maybe that was handy, if the taste of blood and Foyet ever came back to Aaron, and he needed--

David looked up into Aaron's face again, thinking about it, and the sad smile that had grown on Aaron's lips brought something else back to him. _You always know just what to say,_ he heard. _When I read what you write... it's easier to make peace with..._

He had it.

He could write.

“We'll get him,” said David. “I told you. We'll get him. I have an idea. You know what I heard once about what you should do if you want a tattoo?”

Aaron blinked. “Hang it up on your wall for a year?”

“That's also good advice. What I heard is you ought to draw it where you want it with a marker or something. And then, yeah. A year or whatever.” David glanced around the apartment. “I'm not an artist, but I have an idea. Do you have anything non-toxic around?”

“Jack's school supplies.” Aaron's gaze flicked to a cupboard and then fixed again on David. He looked the way he did when they figured out the way they would catch their unsub. “He has two sets. I don't think he's even opened these yet.”

David pushed against Aaron's chest. “Sit down.” Aaron stepped back willingly at the first hint of pressure, before the words even passed David's lips. He released David's hands and sat gingerly on the couch. He leaned forward so much he was on the edge of it. David muttered, “Relax,” and he rifled through the cabinet. He broke open the pack of rainbow markers and pulled out the plain black. He went back to Aaron and sat next to him.

As expected, Aaron stopped trying to fall off the couch and instead faced sideways, towards him. He moved like he made David his new gravity.

That was a lot of responsibility. Luckily, David had plenty of practice being a star. He met Aaron's eyes, saw him courageously unguarded. His head wasn't quite still. He was trembling.

David tucked the marker into his own breast pocket. He asked, “Is it me you're afraid of?”

Aaron swallowed. “Not exactly,” he said. “I'm afraid of a feeling. I'm not used to this.”

David reached out his hand but stopped short of Aaron's shirt collar. So carefully ironed and starched. So typical from Aaron. “May I?”

“Of course.”

David hummed. He touched the shirt collar. He rubbed gently on it, against the flesh underneath. “I've got an idea,” he said, “but I've got to take this off.”

“I just said that you could.”

“Okay.” David leaned in. “Which button first?”

There was a pause. “The top.”

David touched the button and set his fingers in the right places to undo it. He looked up into Aaron's eyes.

Aaron's brow crinkled at him in perplexity. “Go ahead.”

David obeyed. He glanced down at the newly revealed skin—so far unblemished—pressed his fingers against it reverently, and looked up again. “Do you want another?”

Aaron's study of him grew more intense. “Yes.”

Without looking down David eased the next button open. He felt the skin he'd exposed, which was only starting to regrow a fine gray dusting of hair after all the shaving for hospital procedures. He found a raised, straight break in the hair's natural grain. Extremely thick. Crisscrossed by another. And another. He saw Aaron's face tighten, but before David could pull back, Aaron's hands gripped his biceps and held him in place.

“Keep going,” Aaron said.

When the shirt was completely undone, Aaron released David's arms.

“My plan was to write something,” said David. “It might not look that fancy, but it's all I got.”

Aaron's eyes slid closed. He nodded.

David smoothed his fingers over a wide scar. It was bracketed by scars from stitches, from staples, from the trauma clamps. It was one out of so many. So, so many, these places Aaron felt he couldn't take back. David hadn't seen them like this yet, not all at once, with Aaron willingly showing him. Maybe David should have asked sooner than tonight. Did Aaron think he didn't want to see, before, because he hadn't asked? How did Aaron think he'd react?

Had anyone besides doctors seen him yet like this?

David slid his hands between Aaron's shirt and the bare skin of his shoulders. “Don't want to mess this up,” he said. “You mind if I take it all the way off?”

Aaron's eyes snapped open. “Dave, I told you yes.”

“What? It gets cold in here.”

“You don't have to--”

“What? Be careful? Ask you?” David scooted closer and leaned forward until their cheekbones touched. “Maybe I want to,” he whispered. He slid his hands back and down Aaron's arms, pushing the formal shirt off. He kept falling back on things he did during sex, because that was where he usually searched for this feeling. He expected leaving out the sex part of this level of intensity, of intimacy, with someone else to feel more strange. But it didn't. Touching Aaron like this reminded him of the strangeness of a first kiss, but that was it.

Aaron shivered. He reached between them into David's pocket and took the black marker. He placed it in David's hand.

“What do you want me to write?” asked David.

“It doesn't matter. It just has to be you.”

“Any particular... areas?”

“Dave, just, please. I don't care.”

“Okay. Relax. I'm doing it. I'll start small.” David got ready. He chose a patch of Aaron's pectoral, relatively flat. _Remember the case where we met?_ he wrote. Aaron's hands rose to grip David's shoulders as the tip of the marker touched his skin. David glanced up. Aaron was looking down. David whispered, “Remember?”

Aaron nodded.

David smiled ruefully. “A lot of memories came out of that case. It started the whole BAU.”

“I know our first case isn't closed for you.”

“Every year, another name.”

“He had to do it on your birthday. A day he'd choose. I worried before, but I never realized... It must be like this for you. He's a part of your life now, like a mark.”

“He's a guy in a prison cell. But yeah, that's why mine did it, too. He gets what he wanted.”

“I'm always willing to go there with you.”

“I know. But that's the thing. He'd be able to tell if you drove me there. He wants to see me defeated. I don't want him changing tack because I'm suddenly stronger. Because I'd know you're with me and not be thinking about him.”

“It is the same, isn't it? I wish we could fix this.”

“When I saw you at that crime scene, you looked just like when you came back from Afghanistan.” David nudged Aaron and rubbed their five o' clock shadows together. Aaron laughed in that quiet way he had, the way that made David prouder than anyone else's bellow. David leaned back and smoothed Aaron's skin on his other pec. He wrote: _I know not everyone's a fan of the beard, but I am. It's a good look on you._ That took up several ribs. Bit uneven, he thought, examining the other side.

“Dave, you keep mentioning Afghanistan when state police are around. They'll think I'm some kind of veteran.”

David glanced up. “Well, aren't we? Isn't that right?”

“It's not quite accurate.”

“Okay, okay. I'll lay off. I just like that operation you ran. It was really impressive.”

“Tell that to command. It wasn't planned.”

“Ugh. You pacify a province, and they're mad. Typical bureaucracy.”

“I kept telling them I didn't mean to do it.”

_You're good,_ David wrote.  _Don't apologize for it._

Aaron laughed, jolting David's hand at the last letters. “Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to mess you up.”

“No, it's good! It adds character.” David wrote _CHARACTER!_ in big block letters on Aaron's stomach and drew an arrow pointing to the wobbly letters on his ribs. “You wanted it something unique, right? Something _us_?” He wrote _Us_ over Aaron's heart and underlined it twice.

“Ha,” Aaron's chest shook and jostled David's writing hand again, “all right, now _that's_ your fault.” The S became quite stylized. “You're making me laugh.” He slumped against David and chuckled. His bare arms moved, and David found himself in a shockingly comfortable embrace. One of Aaron's hands fit around the back of his neck, and the other cradled his rib cage. “You know, Dave...” His voice grew soft and sober again beside David's ear. “You're a better person than you think you are.”

They'd had this talk before. Aaron thanked him, David protested and told self-deprecating jokes, Aaron frowned and told him not to put himself down. This time David just let him win: “You know what? Maybe I am, when you're around.”

Aaron's neck flushed. He made an embarrassed sound. 

David decided that was a good thing. He wiggled back and tucked his tongue between his teeth as he wrote on Aaron's collarbone:  _You make me better._

Aaron blinked and twisted his neck to stare at it. It took him a few moments to read it upside down.

“Is that one too high?” asked David. He couldn't tell whether the tips of the letters would peek above Aaron's collared shirts. “I mean, we can probably get it off if--”

“No.”

“Okay.” David leaned back. “I think I've done a pretty thorough job.” And this was weird. Weird in a good way, but still weird. So, especially if it worked, he didn't want to overdo it. “Take a look?”

Aaron hesitated. “I suppose I should.” Abruptly, he stood up. He walked briskly towards the bathroom.

David almost fell when Aaron's weight left the cushions. He hadn't been prepared. Looking in the mirror wasn't exactly what he meant. He'd meant look down, check out the whole picture... David scrambled off the couch. Him and his big mouth. Why couldn't he be like Aaron and speak more carefully?

He found Aaron inside the bathroom doorway, at the sink. Aaron had turned on the light, but David couldn't read his face. There was a moment when he could see Aaron's reflection, but Aaron hadn't noticed him, and David was convinced he'd messed everything up. He was convinced Aaron would turn his head to the side, just so, bite his cheek, and clench his fists. Aaron once told him he wished he showed pain like other people. Aaron actually thought less of himself because he was resilient, because he could stay standing when others fell. He thought that meant his pain meant less. David could never quite convince him otherwise.

Then Aaron noticed him standing behind him in the mirror. He smiled.

That was when David started breathing again.

“Last time I saw it,” said Aaron, half turning towards him, “I couldn't breathe. Now it isn't him. It's like when I see you or something we did, an award on the wall, an agent we've trained. It's that warmth. It's you.”

David rested a hand on his bare shoulder. “And therefore it's you, too. Right? 'This man, too, is Alexander'!”

“I think I'll shower in the morning,” murmured Aaron. “I want to do it without getting rid of this.”

“It ought to take a few days to fade.”

Aaron nodded.

“If this helps, we can do it again.”

“I didn't expect...” Aaron placed his hand over David's. “Thank you. If you're all right with it.”

“Anything. Just ask.”

That night David felt oddly warm and content as he slipped under rich blankets in an empty house where he lived alone. Some people were with you even when they weren't, he'd come to learn, and sometimes... as in the case of himself and Aaron... that lingering togetherness was even a good thing.

They could do this. They could paint ink over scars. They could be together in a way that was right for them, and only they would decide what that meant.

 


End file.
